Content marketing is hot! Content marketing is the new SEO. Content marketing has killed SEO. Content marketing is the buzzword for 2013.

These are some of the headlines I saw as I was blog hopping my way round the internet on my blog commenting exercise to drive traffic to my blog for both the Quick Start Challenge and  Turn $100 into $2,000 in 60 Days Challenge

What the heck is content marketing?

I found some really long and complicated explanations about it but the simplest one I found that sums it up nicely was this:

“Content Marketing is the creation and sharing of content for the purpose of promoting a product or service.”

In other words, it is content that you put on your website and promote. It can be text, video, infographics, images, whatever you put on your site.

The word is out that Google is favoring content marketing.

One of the main reasons why people use the internet is to find information right?

Although many bloggers and website owners are complaining that they have been hit by Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithmic improvements they have ensured that users can find better content.

Content is the perfect way for us bloggers to provide it to our target audience and boost traffic.

Creating and publishing great content on your blog is one thing but if people can’t find it and don’t see it, what good is your content?

This is where marketing comes in. Content marketing is used by big businesses to promote their brand but bloggers can use it improve their SEO and to boost traffic.

Here are 5 content marketing tips

#1. Promote Your Content

No matter how great your content if you don’t promote it then you are selling yourself short. When you publish any content make sure you put in as much effort into spreading the word as you did in creating it in the first place.

• Share your content with your email subscriber list.

• Announce it on your social media accounts. Post an image to Facebook related to your blog post.

• Make sure you have social sharing buttons displayed at the top and bottom of your blog posts and ask your readers to share it.

• Ask friends to promote it.

#2. Repurpose Your Content

If you have been blogging for some time you have probably created a ton of content so why not use it again?

• You can bundle articles together into special pdf reports which you can give away. Upload them to free ebook sharing sites like www.free-ebooks.net/ www.e-booksdirectory.com/ or share on LoyaltePays

• Share a condensed version of your blog posts with your email subscribers and include a link to the full article on your blog.

• Include a snippet of your best content and link to that content in your standard email signature line.

• Turn your articles into short videos. One way of doing this easily is with Article Video Robot

• Infographics are extremely popular now so why not turn some of your blog posts into infographics? According to Neil Patel infographics were crucial for growing KISSmetrics from 0 to 350,000 readers a month.

• Turn them into a presentation using a tool like SlideShare or Brainshark.

• Use the main ideas of several of your articles and turn them into a guest post. Guest posts are the way to go to get earned backlinks in 2013.  That is what Google is looking for.

#3. Share Other People’s Content.

You might be asking yourself why on earth you would want to share other bloggers’ content. It seems more natural to focus on your own content. You’ve worked hard at creating it and it was designed to promote your own business but there are some benefits to promoting others content.

By sharing other content with your readers you can set yourself up as a valuble resource for great content.

You are also creating relationships with fellow bloggers. They are more likely to return the favor and share your content.

Try it and see what happens.

#4.Understand Your Target Audience

Do you know what makes your target audience tick? Having a clear understanding of your target audience is the key to sucessful content marketing.

Ways to do this can include:

• Do frequent keyword research to keep on top of what people in your chosen niche are searching for. You can use good old Google Adwords free keyword tool for this.

• One quick and easy way to see what people are searching for is to start typing your keyword into the query box in any search engine like Google or Bing and see what other terms pop up. Create your content round these keywords.

• Take notice of blog and social media comments. Facebook’s new graph search Graph can give you some insight into what your audiences likes.

• Internet forums are a great place for you to learn about what your target audience wants to know.

• Ask your readers what they want to know.

• Quora allows you to follow your niche topic and keep track of a wide range of complex questions and answers

#5. Quality Over Quantity

While it’s true that more content gives you more oportunity to be seen focusing on quality means that your content will go further.

Matt Cutts says that the goal is to create unique pages and a unique visitor experience.

If you produce short, thin or barely helpful posts for the sake of publishing something because you’ve read that you should blog regularly any readers you do get will not be back for more.

Taking time to produce more detailed content and making it more visualy appealing will encourage readers to recommend your content.

Kiss Metrics says that in a world where we are overloaded with poor content long, high quality detailed Blog Posts will be the future of content marketing.

According to the Content Marketing Institute

“Thought leaders and marketing experts from around the world, including the likes of Seth Godin and hundreds of the leading thinkers in marketing have concluded that content marketing isn’t just the future, it’s the present.”

So, to sum up content marketing may be hot but it is not the new SEO. Search engine optimization is more than quality content. You need to promote the heck out of your blog posts as well to boost traffic.

How are you promoting yours? Let me know by leaving a comment and don’t forget to share this post! Thanks 🙂